


Lessons in Conflict Resolution

by abaxialCornucopia



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human/Troll Society (Homestuck), It's a shameless Venom AU, Minor Calliope/Roxy Lalonde, Minor Jake English/Dirk Strider, Minor John Egbert/Dirk Strider, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-01 14:19:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16286222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abaxialCornucopia/pseuds/abaxialCornucopia
Summary: Dirk was a good enough kid in high school to remember his biology lectures. He knows noteverysymbiotic relationship benefits both parties, not from a survival standpoint at least.For some reason (definitely not crippling loneliness), he lets the weird, alien-groomed parasite feast on his internal organs. (Okay, it’sprobablydue to crippling loneliness.)





	1. Prologue, or You can't tell a man by the song he sings

**Author's Note:**

> Bangs pots and pans in support for Dirk/Hal content (even if it's my own writing).

You don’t mind working with trolls. Alternian etiquette means they’re harsh and often violent, but extremely competent, which you value a lot more than fake friendliness. Back in high school, you’d specifically choose to do joint assignments with trolls. Mostly because you hated every human kid in your classes, but hey. It’s a point in the aliens’ favour.

Sometimes, however, the whole private-labs-with-death-threats-aimed-at-trespassers thing freaks you out. (Lab 1025 isn’t locked, but the whiteboard affixed to the door says _Serket-Peixes workzone, stay away or be culled,_ so you obediently return to your dorm. You’re not the most culturally sensitive guy, but you’re fairly sure culling isn’t a good thing. Best to stay on their good side.)

Roxy’s already there when you arrive. You wonder how exhausted you must look, because she doesn’t give you the customary what-did-you-do-how-was-your-day treatment, just hops out of your bed and lets you crash face-first into a pillow. She helps you out of your skinny jeans, too, and you hope she interprets your disgruntled moan as a gesture of appreciation.

At least your best friend understands. You love her so much.

* * *

The next day, on your way to your last class, you find yourself standing in front of Lab 1025 a second time. You remember that, as a kid, Dave used to tease you for being too curious. Joke’s on him, you’re much worse nowadays.

The warning-cum-death threat is still up, but just a while ago you saw both Meenah and Vriska leave, presumably to their dorms. Plus, at least on paper, every student’s got full clearance to all laboratories on campus, which means you couldn’t be expelled even if you got caught.

Daring, you swipe your keycard over the door lock. The door clicks open and you’re engulfed in cold air.

Inside, there’s rows and rows of enormous Plexiglass cages—but they’re all empty, which doesn’t make any goddamn sense. There must be a reason the scariest women you’ve ever met stay here every single day, and you’re determined to find out what it is.

The desks have been wiped clean, save for an inconspicuous stack of papers and a password-locked computer. You’re really not in the mood to try and break into Meenah Peixes’ laptop, so you leave it alone and go back to inspecting the cages.

They’re sturdy, about half a metre thick. You touch the acrylic gingerly and wonder what in the world could possibly be kept here. There aren’t many terrestrial beings that require this level of safety, and none of them would be reasonably allowed on campus. Then again, _trolls_ are allowed on campus. Ha. Your vaguely racist jokes are so good.

Suddenly, a steady drip-drip sound starts, echoing behind you. Your entire body seizes up. Either Meenah and Vriska decided to shit all over lab safety regulations or you’re not alone, which shouldn’t be possible at all. You double checked. Scratch that, you _triple_ checked. You’d wager there isn’t anyone else in this floor.

In a bout of courage—or self-hate—you turn around.

As soon as you lay eyes on the strange black puddle spreading over the floor, you’re ambushed by something, a huge amorphous blob fighting to crawl all over your back. You hear nothing save for your own frantic heartbeat and the sound of inky slime trying to slip into your ears.

It’s cold and clings to your body when you thrash against it. You try to scream for help, but the thing seizes the opportunity to worm a bizarre appendage into your mouth, effectively asphyxiating you.

Great. Curiosity really did kill the cat. You’re the cat, it is you.

Your breath quickens then starts to give out, vision simultaneously going black at the edges. It’s funny because you acutely feel your senses slowly fading away, which means you get to ponder your dumbassery in your very final moments.

 _Is Roxy going to miss me,_ you wonder. _Probably. She still asks me to roll all her joints._ You choke out an approximation of a laugh. Shit, you’re about to die and you still manage to make fun of your best friend, that’s how convoluted your sense of humour is.

Well, at least the pins and needles prickling all over your skin mean you don’t feel any pain when you collapse.

* * *

Blinding light.

Are you in heaven? Unless paradise decided to hire the condescending hospital ladies who schooled you on safe gay sex once, probably not.

You’re alive. The realisation sends a rush of relief straight through you. Your 16-year-old anhedonic ass would fucking _die_ if he knew you were happy to be alive. Gratefulness is quickly replaced by abject terror, however, because this means someone found you, knocked out by a 3D Rorschach inkblot, on the floor of a research lab occupied by the most terrifying people in a billion mile radius.

“Fuck,” you croak out. At least your voice sounds fine. Hell, your throat doesn’t hurt at all, and it definitely should ache at least a little, considering you vividly recall deep throating a giant tentacle, sadly in the least sexual sense possible.

“Language,” a nurse chastises. “You students never cease to amuse me.”

“What the hell happened, Jesus.”

“Well, honey, you tell me,” the nurse says. She doesn’t even look at you, just keeps on rearranging tiny pill bottles on the shelves. “You were admitted on an emergency call, but we couldn’t find anything out of line with you.”

You raise an eyebrow. “Nothing at all? But I,” you cut yourself off. Maybe it’s better not to mention the physical embodiment of darkness eating you alive, lest you get sent straight to the hospital’s psych ward. “…I passed out all of a sudden.”

“I’m afraid I can’t be of any help, darling. Do you want any painkillers? We’ll have to send you home real soon.”

“I’m good,” you groan. The nurse gives you an apologetic smile, hands you a premade fit note before she (politely) kicks you out of the infirmary.

You’re three miles east of the main campus, so you ring Roxy to come pick you up. You feel fucking awful bothering her at eight in the morning; when she picks up, there’s both relief and panic in her voice, and you _know_ she stayed up worrying about you. Ring the bells, they’ve announced the winner of the  _Worst Friend of the Century_ award, and you’ve got the perfect fuckin’ acceptance speech to give.

(When you arrive back at your shared room, Roxy embraces you in what must be the millionth tight hug in the past fifteen minutes, then promptly goes to sleep. You painstakingly toss and turn until you’re similarly unconscious, sprawled across the mattress in a pitiful attempt to forget your own downfall into insanity.)

* * *

You dream.

Dreaming isn’t a common occurrence for you. More often than not, your brain sizzles out after days without sleep and shuts down completely when you finally rest. This time, however, you dream of light and dark and a mirror to your own soul. The feeling of being scrutinised makes your skin crawl.

You watch your reflection as tendrils, uncannily similar to the ones you’d struggled against, slither out your eyes, pools of black ink and God’s retribution dirtying your hands.

When you wake up, your chest heaves like you’ve run a goddamn marathon. Thankfully, Roxy isn’t there to see your panic attack.

The worst part is you’re so horrified by the nightmare playing in your head over and over, you can’t even think rationally about the whole situation. What the fuck is wrong with you? Did you hallucinate the last 24 hours? Are you finally going batshit after poring over too many textbooks on Turing’s homosexuality?

By now, you’ve come to terms with the fact that this probably isn’t the kind of mental health problem you can ignore by looping Nujabes playlists for hours on end. You whip out your phone, Google Night terrors and scroll through the results. Most of the symptoms don’t apply to you. Acute hallucinations, you try. This yields better results, but would you _really_ be able to recognise your own issues if you were as disconnected from reality as Wikipedia says you _should_ be? 

Pathetic meatbags. Attempting to diagnose what isn’t disorderly at all. 

Holy shit, maybe you _should_ have gone to the psychiatric ward. You jolt. You remember a lecture Calliope gave you, once, about the ways people experience auditory hallucinations. This doesn’t remind you of that at all. In fact, it feels absurdly real.

“Who the fuck,” you stutter. “What the fuck,” you correct yourself, because the booming voice echoing in your head can’t possibly be anywhere near the human realm.

Your repeated recollection of our meeting made me believe you weren’t going to forget me so quickly.

Your heart does a couple somersaults and lodges itself firmly in your throat. Great. You’re stuck in a shitty remake of 90s Japanese horror films and nobody thought of warning you beforehand. “You’re the thing which tried to murder me,” you say. “And you didn’t murder me _then,_ but you decided to stick around and kill me while I’m alone in my dorm, which is the next best thing for murderous alien lifeforms. Did I get that right?”

I’m far from murderous or alien. The thing’s hiss sounds _annoyed._ You mentally jot that down for future reference: a creature who jumped on and asphyxiated you dislikes being referred to as murderous. Fuckin’ A.

“Listen, can you just—leave? I’m not up to date on the fuckin’ mechanics of alien possession, but I’m going to give you one or two lessons on human courtesy. First: unless you’re a non-LaVeyan satanist, nobody likes being possessed. This shit. Is not. Okay.”

I do not want to hear your lessons, it growls, and all of a sudden something invisible seizes your shaky arm. When _it_ happens, you almost faint on the spot.

Your arm’s forcibly raised to eye level, and you watch, petrified, as black tendrils, just like the ones you’d fought, crawl over your skin and cover it from your elbow to the very tips of your fingers, taking away any proprioception you once had. Then, a black mass sprouts from your arm and shapes itself into a vaguely humanoid form, a regular Joe’s face but with a much more threatening jaw. Finally, two eyes slowly blink at you, iridescent red, and the creature bares its sharp teeth in a grin.

“Holy fuck,” you say. Then you pass out for the second time in twenty-four hours.


	2. One, or Let me into your encryption

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The symbiote gets a name and Dirk thinks too much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m having crazy amounts of fun writing this. So. <3

Alright. You’ve consumed a lot of bizarre hentai in your time. You aren’t sheltered either; you’re no stranger to alien bugs being used as household appliances and gadgets. You’ve seen weird shit.

But nothing in this godforsaken Earth could’ve prepared you to be the host of a strangely narcissistic koinobiont. The thing is downright insufferable; it randomly spouts shit like Pathetic. all the fucking time, says it’s hungry every five minutes, and stops you from asking a frat boy to Netflix and chill while Roxy’s away, which is probably the worst part of this whole predicament.

At least it doesn’t pull any of the body horror shit it did the first time you talked. How courteous. Maybe having an annoying parasite monitoring your every move isn’t _that_ awful. Definitely not as bad as it could be. 

So while you’re cooking (heating up leftovers Roxy labeled for dirky), you ask it, “Do you have a name?”

I don’t. Back at the research facility, I was given a generic serial name, but nothing with an emotional significance like a human’s.

“What was it?” Fuck, you can’t possibly be trying to develop some kind of emotional connection with a literal lab-made parasite.

AR. I was their fourty-fourth attempt at creating a symbiote.

Fuck, there are more creepy parasites lurking in the wild, waiting for Bear Grylls to try and eat them? No. They all failed to find a suitable host or survive outside one. I should be the only one of my kind on Earth.

You really ought to get used to the fact that this thing (AR?) is attuned to your thoughts. “So you’re supposedly the only one left. Okay.”

That is what I just said.

“And you’re not planning on fucking off somewhere else anytime soon, are you?”

You are the most adequate host I could wish for. That is specifically why I latched onto you so quickly. Unless you confront my creators and undergo a particularly invasive surgical process, I will be around for a while, yes.

You sigh. This really is the kind of shit which wouldn’t happen to anyone else. 

The microwave startles you out of your train of thought with a loud noise. You almost burn yourself retrieving your plate—but AR quickly wraps its tendrils over your fingertips, shielding you. “Thanks,” you mumble. “I guess… You should have a name, if you’re going to stay as the proverbial parrot on my shoulder. You got any ideas?”

No. I have never interacted with my kind outside an artificial, earthly setting. I do not have any reference of naming customs whatsoever.

“Right.” You shove a forkful of mac and cheese in your mouth while you give it some thought. You don’t want to give AR an edgy BattleTag for a name. This is a serious fuckin’ matter—but it doesn’t mean you can’t take the piss. You snort. “What about Kylo Ren?”

You forget I am acutely aware of your mockery. Lame.

You’ve got an insistently curious, lab-created, non-human conscience who tried to kill you under the guise of survival instincts. Hang on. “How do we feel about Hal,” you ask. This one’s kind of a genuine suggestion. Also way more socially acceptable than Kylo Ren, if that’s a factor. 

_We._ Hal. Yes, we like that.

* * *

You don’t think Hal has a sleep schedule _per se,_ but it definitely goes quieter at times, which means you can kick back and relax by binge-rewatching all of _Gurren Lagann_ overnight without fear of rude quips. Until Roxy comes back, that is. 

Bold of you to assume you’ll ever be alone, because you’re tearing up at Kamina’s last Giga Drill Break against Thymilph when a voice pipes up, It seems you’re mildly distressed over fictional works, Dirk.

“Fuck off,” you say, wipe away the moisture gathering at your eyes. “’M not crying. Humans sweat sometimes, shithead.” 

I may not be an _expert,_ but I am aware that you are on the verge of tears, Dirk.

“Doesn’t your kind have something like this? Fake children’s stories designed to make adult losers sad?” 

As I have repeatedly stated, I am not well-versed on my kin’s customs. But even I can say this is one of the most pathetic displays I can fathom. It is unlikely we mirror this behaviour in any way.

“Whatever,” you groan. Your phone pings with a text from Roxy. You foolishly unlock it, knowing Hal’s still creeping on you. 

Is that a picture of the character whose death you were mourning? Fucking hell, it knows about your Kamina wallpaper now. 

“So what.” 

I do not see the appeal whatsoever. He is boisterous and encouraging towards his peers, but that is not particularly rare in your species. Is it his appearance? So Hal watched the entire thing with you. You should use that as blackmail material sometime. 

“I guess that helps, yeah. People like characters who look stylish. They don’t really look like _real_ people, that’s why they’re fuckin’ dope.” 

I see. Well, _we_ may arrange that , it says. That’s really fuckin’ ominous by itself, and—black appendages cover the back of your head and cover your eyes like they’re playing an impromptu game of _Guess Who._ You panic for a second _(fuck, is it trying to kill me again),_ but then the darkness warps into a translucent shade of red. 

Holy shit, Hal did _not_ just do what you think it did. You swipe the Camera app open. 

There’s a pair of Kamina shades perched on your nose, in the same colour as Hal’s eyes had been when it blinked menacingly at you. Well. That’s a thing. Thank God you didn’t watch fucking _Soul Eater_ or something, lest it turn into a giant scythe. 

“What the fuck,” you say. “What the fuck, how the fuck, this is amazing but—what the fuck did you just do.” 

I have shaped myself to better suit your tastes, Dirk. _We_ may now live and work as one. You’re not sure you dig the whole _living as one_ proposal, but you dig the glasses so _much._ They’re the coolest thing you’ve seen since Dave gifted you the premium Hikari Rainbow Dash figure last Christmas. (God, you’re a fucking loser. But then again, if Hal sat through eight episodes of _Gurren Lagann_ with you without saying a word, you’re both losers.) 

“Alright,” you shrug. “You got full clearance to sit on my face as long as you want, dude. Wait, scratch that. Pretend I never said shit.”

You are flustered, Dirk. Does your previous statement bother you?

You don’t dignify it with a verbal response. Instead, you channel all your energy into the strongest _go fuck yourself_ that’s ever crossed your mind.

* * *

“Honey, I’m home,” Roxy croons as she nonchalantly kicks the door in. God, she has no respect for university facilities whatsoever. You love it. “What’s that?” She pokes your (still alien, still alive) shades with a polished nail. Uh.

We are Hal. “Nothing. Just some sunglasses. Anime style. Might start a club or something, you know how I am. Always making shit up only to drop it after two days of utter failures.” 

She cocks her head. You have no fucking idea if what Hal says is audible to anyone but you. You probably should have checked in with it beforehand. Thankfully, it understands your internal panic and shuts up. “Riiiight. I must be hearing things or whatevs. Doesn’t matter. Did you like the gift I left for you?” 

“I did, thanks. You’re an angel. I don’t think I say that nearly as much as I should.” 

“You’re damn right you don’t,” she laughs. “But that’s just your Strider genes, and I know you love me.” 

“I really do,” you say, because it’s true and you should say it. You sigh. “Sorry about the other day, by the way. I was an enormous, non-wrapped-before-whacked dick, and I’m sorry. See, I can unlodge the stick in my ass sometimes.” 

She smiles at you, that soft look which always reminds you of home, and you feel the tension ebb out of your body. “Don’t you worry your pretty head over it. I’m hella paranoid, so it’s on both of us. I can’t assume you’re dead in a ditch every time you go out overnight.” 

“I would’ve done the same,” you admit. “Shit, I’m sorry for making you worry.” 

“But what happened? I mean, you’re safe and sound, and we’re here and I just—don’t have any idea what the heck happened to my best friend, and I feel like such a shitty friend,” she laments. You give her a reassuring pat on the back. If there’s anyone who shouldn’t even consider thinking they’re awful, it’s Roxy. 

You think about the naming debacle, Kylo Ren and the living Kamina shades you’re wearing. You think about Hal and shape-shifting and deep, booming voices mocking you in your head. And Roxy’s already dealt with _way_ too much of your shit in the past few years. You almost consider ranting about a conscious, distantly humanoid parasite making a home out of your body. 

Instead, you say, “It’s been a weird fuckin’ day, Rox. Weirder than the biggest stack of wizard slash on Earth.”

”You know you can tell me anything, right?” 

_Can_ you? The question lingers in your head. It’s not that you don’t trust Roxy, you’d fucking die for her, but—you’ve never been keen on sharing the brunt of your fucked up problems. Plus, Roxy’s busy. She has problems to deal with, classes to take, extra credit to get, and not enough time to put up with the consequences of your bullshit. 

”I know. I’ll tell you sometime, I promise.”

**Author's Note:**

> Beatboxes in shame of my own deeds. When will I update this? When God accepts my invitation to fistfight behind a 7/11.


End file.
